This golden week (on Thursday) we drove to Tago Town in Izu, Shizuoka Prefecture and went canoeing around the beautiful islands in the area.
Summer is off limits for Tagosehama beach with the convenient car park closed, but if you avoid the summer season, you get to go down a very winding road, past the diving and canoeing schools but will eventually come to the car park and a quick 1 minute walk with our inflatable canoe to the beach.
The beaches are pebbles here, but the water is the main draw with canoeing in Izu. We came here last year and there were millions of small fish everywhere. Unfortunately, this time, there were no fish at all. Now its spring in Japan, last time we came, it was Autumn, it makes a huge difference to the life in the shallow waters around the islands.
Instead of fish, the sea was full of seaweed blooms, snails, crabs, sea urchins, anemones, coral and more sedentary things. I suppose that the fish are down in the depths engaging in the all time favorite thing to do for everyone.
We found that one of the nicer things to see around the volcanic islands in the area were the nesting cormorants and other birds up in the heights of the island. Just watching the poor birds having to constantly finding food for their hungry chicks made me tired.
After we had set up camp on a deserted beach, had eaten lunch and done some more paddling around, we packed up and went to the lovely little hot spring in Toi, called Motoyu Onsen. The water there can sometimes be boiling hot, which it was in the inside bath today, but the outside bath was lovely, with a little garden next to the bath and with nature all around. The price is good too at only 300 yen.
Tago Town is a lovely area to go and see nature in a somewhat untouched state. The west coast of Izu is harder to get to than the east coast, with no trains and further from Tokyo and so is more of a nature lovers paradise. Its great for scuba diving and canoeing and we will certainly go again soon.